Further written evidence submitted by the Department for International Development
- Where does GPE funding fit into the figures for how much DFID spends on education? Is it spread across several years or is there a spike in replenishment years?
Previously, DFID has made an overall pledge for the duration of a GPE replenishment. However, this is disbursed according to an annual schedule across the replenishment to comply with DFID’s principles on financial need. For example, in 2014, DFID pledged up to £300 million between 2015 and 2018, with its actual contribution (based on a maximum share of 15%) being £210 million. This pledge has been disbursed over the last 3 years, and will continue to be disbursed in this way until 2018.
DFID’s 2015-2018 pledge has been disbursed across the following financial years and is inclusive of our conditional payments: £18 million (2015), £88 million (2016), £77 million (2017, still to be paid) and £27 million (2018). The high increases in 2016 and 2017 are due to £50million tranches being subject to the GPE meeting certain conditions.
- Some more information on the new disability database work with UNESCO, as well as some information about the Punjab example mentioned.
Attached is a table with some information on disability and education programming in DFID and further information on the UNESCO work on disability.
- Figures on the number of new education advisers employed/deployed.
DFID’s strength as a technical organisation lies in its cadres of technical experts who lead policy and programmes in headquarters and in country. The National Audit Office emphasised this point in their study on DFID’s bilateral education programme in 2011. The education cadre has grown in recent years and now totals 43. Education advisers have also been redeployed around the organisation to respond to new and emerging challenges; such as the large scale-up of work around Syria.
- Unpacking the figures on ECW e.g. the 18% figure mentioned during the session.
Globally 75million children and youth are affected by emergencies and protracted crises and are in need of education support. Half of these children (approximately 37million) are out of school. The scale of ambition for Education Cannot Wait (ECW) is high. The fund has met its first year target of $150million in 2017 and aims to raise $3.85billion cumulatively over 5 years by 2021. If the fund is able to reach this ambitious goal, this should mean it can provide education opportunities for over 10million children and youth affected by crises [articulated in the Results Framework and Roadmap on the ECW website].
The original proposal for the Fund was made in the paper ‘Education Cannot Wait: Proposing a fund for education in emergencies’ prepared by an ODI led project team, financed by DFID, USAID and the Government of Norway and published in 2016 [http://s3.amazonaws.com/inee-assets/resources/ECW_-_Proposing_a_fund_for_EiE.pdf]. The paper proposes that a target of $3.85billion could reach 18% of the 75million children and youth affected by emergencies and protracted crises, approximately 13.6million children. These figures provide the basis for ECW’s ambition to reach over 10million children with the proposed target of $3.85billion over 5 years.
ECW is currently supporting education in Syria, Yemen, Chad, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Peru, Somalia and Ukraine; these investments will reach 3.4 million children. First Emergency Response funding is also planned in Nepal and Bangladesh and multi-year programmes in Afghanistan, Uganda and Lebanon – these investments will increase the numbers of children reached through ECW funding by the end of next year.